Текст книги "Jessica Daniel: Locked In / Vigilante / The Woman in Black"

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 47 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

She rushed up to the closest one who she didn’t recognise and showed her identification. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You got here quick,’ the officer said, looking surprised.

‘I was in the area. What’s happening?’

‘A member of the public phoned 999. We came down to check things then called it in. I guess that’s why you’re here. Scene of Crime are on their way but they might be a while because there’s been a pile-up on the M60.’

Jessica skipped around the men, walking to an area on the grassy verge next to the main part of the cathedral. There was a white plastic sheet which she lifted, wincing at what was underneath.

Not only was it another severed hand with its ring finger missing but, given the tattoo that ran the length of the person’s little finger, she knew it belonged to Jacob Chrisp.

14

Jessica had mixed feelings the next day. Technically, she wasn’t quite senior enough to be heading an investigation and everything was supposed to be referred up. In practice, it might as well be her case. With anything like this, the next body or, in this case, hand, was met with dread and regret for the victim along with a twinge of selfish relief you had something new to work with. It was those types of feelings you could never talk about with a civilian. It wasn’t that you looked forward to the next macabre find but sometimes it became the only way to get things moving.

She hadn’t exactly warmed to Jacob Chrisp during their brief meeting but he surely didn’t deserve what had happened to him? Jessica had returned to the station the previous evening and found a contact number and address for the man’s parents. Someone local to them in Lancaster had gone to break the news, then, if that wasn’t bad enough, they’d asked for a mouth swab from one of the parents to confirm for sure the hand definitely belonged to him. Jessica had no doubts what the results would show. Unless someone else had the exact same swirling tattoo along the side of their hand, she knew it would prove to be Jacob’s.

That meant three players from the photo of the rugby team had likely been killed and the priority now was speaking to every person in the picture face-to-face. She had talked to both constables the previous evening. Rowlands hadn’t got anything of note from the other two rugby players he had seen that day. With the three dead players and those two, it left ten people she needed to speak to. There could be other squad members too but none of them were either in the photo or named on the back. Diamond hadn’t come up with much from the previous day either, saying it was hard to draw Vicky Barnes away from blaming everything on January.

Rowlands was again working on contacting every member of the rugby team and getting full address details. Jessica was planning on visiting them all one by one, regardless of where they lived around the country. Diamond was juggling a few jobs. She was trying to see if January had a connection to Jacob while, much to Jessica’s relief, talking to the media too. The discovery of the third hand had seemingly woken up the newspapers and TV stations, who were now coming to them for information.

Officers had been sent around to see if the coach, Michael Wright, had an alibi. Jessica hoped he did because she didn’t believe he was involved and keeping him a part of their investigation would only end up wasting their time and perhaps causing him more hurt.

After directing where everyone should be, Jessica finally made her way to where she should have been first thing – the monitoring area for the city’s CCTV cameras. She would have preferred to have either Dave or Izzy with her but, with everything now moving quickly, she didn’t have that luxury. Instead she was in front of the bank of monitors with one of the members of the private security firm who operated the city’s cameras. Despite not being her first choice, it was always useful to have two pairs of eyes to look over the footage.

The complicated thing was finding out when the hand had been left. It had been found in the early evening but, if it had been left in the daytime, it would have been completely different to the first two drops where the person in the black cape had appeared at sunrise.

There were no cameras pointing directly at the side of the cathedral itself where the hand had been left but there were only three ways to reach it. The first was from Victoria train station, another route was from the Printworks entertainment complex and the final cut-through was just off the main road. All three areas were huge public hubs and very well-monitored. Jessica was working backwards from the time the police had arrived on the scene.

Given she didn’t know the person she was working alongside, she watched the footage at a slower speed than she might usually have done. Jessica began with images from the cameras leading from the train station to the cathedral. The thought occurred to her that, with no cameras directly watching the spot the hand had been left at, assuming the person knew their positions as well as they seemed to, there was every chance the hand could have been left undetected by pretty much anyone. Because of that, she specifically watched for people in dark clothing, especially those on their own. With the hot day, she thought it would rule out a lot of people before realising that a huge majority of people leaving the train station were wearing suits for work. She skimmed through the coverage all the way back until the sun had gone down in reverse without seeing anything untoward.

The second set of angles came from the main road. There was one camera pointing directly at the entrance to the pathway running alongside the cathedral and a second one monitoring the opposite side of the road. It gave her fewer people to watch but, aside from a few dangerous driving manoeuvres, she again saw nothing.

The final set of cameras were mounted around the Printworks complex. In the evenings the place was full of people visiting the various bars and restaurants and the cinema. There was a steady stream of pedestrians throughout the day but Jessica’s eyes were feeling tired. She checked the time on her phone and realised she had been watching the videos for almost three hours.

She had also missed a text message from Garry Ashford: ‘Got ur piece in. Did u see?’

She texted him back: ‘Yes. Given latest find I reckon it wudve gone in anyway. Still deal a deal. X’

Jessica couldn’t help but feel Garry had struck lucky. She had given him information his editor hadn’t initially been bothered about but, following the latest hand being found, the media outlets were suddenly after information again and would have been looking to run a story about January in any case.

Jessica paused the footage and phoned Izzy. She told the constable she hadn’t found anything so far and asked what had been going on.

‘A few things,’ Izzy replied. ‘I’ve not found you anything from January that links her to the other players yet. Dave’s got a list of addresses and phone numbers for you from the rest of the team. People are all over the country but you already knew that. He’s been helping the press office.’

‘What about Michael Wright?’

‘Didn’t anyone call you?’

‘No, what’s happened?’

‘He’s spent the last couple of days in hospital.’

‘What with?’

‘I’m not sure. One of his neighbours said he fainted on his doorstep. I spoke to someone at the hospital who said he’s been on a ward the past two nights. They’re doing tests.’

Jessica wondered if her questions had brought back too many bad memories that caused him enough stress to have some sort of breakdown. She hoped not but could at least take a tiny amount of solace in the fact he had an alibi and she shouldn’t have to bother him any longer. ‘How’s everyone else?’ she asked.

‘Just busy and hot. Don’t worry, I’ve not grassed you up for breaking the air-conditioning.’

‘It wasn’t me, it was dodgy workmanship.’

‘Whatever. How long are you going to be?’

‘No idea. There’s no camera looking directly at the spot where the hand was left but I’m on the final set of angles looking towards it. Do we have the formal ID yet?’

‘No. Jacob Chrisp’s mother gave us a sample but it is being tested. Someone said the hand wasn’t in a great state either.’

‘Yeah, I saw it. It looked like it had been out in the sun for a while. I’ll call you when I’m coming back.’

Jessica hung up and started the footage again. Her eyes felt a little rested after a few minutes away from it. The man next to her was clearly bored and jumped in his seat when she made an involuntary squeal. ‘Look.’

The footage was almost back to sunrise but a little later than the times the other hands had been left. The angle she was watching came from a camera pointing at the corner of the pathway leading along the side of the cathedral. The device was across the road so the images weren’t entirely clear because the shot was so wide.

Jessica rewound the footage and played it again as the man watched more intently second time around. A figure in a black cape emerged from out of shot and was walking across the road away from the camera. She paused and zoomed in as best she could. As with the previous footage they had found, there wasn’t anything clear enough to get a precise shot of the person’s face and the hood was pulled forward. She could see the same heels from before and, given the person’s stature, it certainly looked like a woman.

‘Is that who you’re looking for?’ the man asked.

Jessica zoomed out slightly and set the video to play again. ‘I think so.’ They both watched as the figure reached the other side of the road and then gasped at the same time.

‘Did she just do what I think she did?’ the man said. Jessica looked at him and his eyes were wide in disbelief.

Jessica scrolled the images backwards and zoomed in again before pressing play. As it got to the crucial part, the man next to her started laughing gently. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said.

She paused the stream and pressed a button to store the screen grab. A printer at the back of the room hummed into action and she walked over to it, returning to her seat with a sheet of paper.

‘They’re waving at the bloody camera,’ she said, barely believing it herself.

The rest of the footage hadn’t been much use. After waving, the figure had walked out of shot towards the spot where the hand had been left, then returned the exact same way. There was a second camera which showed the person walking into an alley but the exit of that had no CCTV pointed at it. Other local cameras had shown Jessica nothing while the quality of the images and the way the person kept their hood forward, angling their face away from the recording devices, ensured there was no clear shot.

The hand had been out in the sun for the best part of twelve hours with no one noticing. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise because it had been left slightly away from the main path on a grassy area and Jessica again thought the person who had left it must have known the district incredibly well. Their audacity was unbelievable.

It also proved beyond any doubt that whoever was leaving the appendages wanted them to be found. The blind spot in the cameras around the cathedral could have given them an opportunity to walk through in a crowd of people during daylight, break off to leave the hand and then walk back out again in another group of pedestrians. They hadn’t done that though, going out of their way to show off. With the fact the person had sent her Lewis Barnes’s finger directly too, she felt as if they were leaving her a trail, wanting her to find out why the men had been targeted. They obviously didn’t want to give her too much information, presumably in case it implicated themselves.

The day after Jessica had gone through the video footage saw the local newspapers and television news bulletins lead off with the still-shot of the figure waving at the camera. Phone calls had started to come in from the public but there wasn’t much to go on as the person’s face wasn’t visible. Jessica left a rather grumpy Rowlands to deal with those as she journeyed around the country with Izzy speaking to the other members of the rugby team.

Cole seemed convinced the rugby connection was key but the more she spoke to the players, the more Jessica began to think there was some other link they hadn’t yet found. It became clear the team had got up to various misdeeds but, through the stories people told, Jessica didn’t believe it amounted to much more than drunken stupidity and immaturity. A few players acted a little evasively as others seemingly spilled everything they knew. Some were married and wanted to meet away from their partners, others had no problems talking in front of them. Most of the players told her what had happened to Michael Wright and almost all of them seemed genuinely sorry for it. The two detectives told all of them that three of their teammates had been harmed and they should be extra careful and report anything suspicious immediately to the police. Putting all ten into protective custody was impractical, especially given the distance between them all.

Jessica and Izzy were sitting on a train back to Manchester after visiting the final player. It had been two and a half days of travelling, talking and then travelling again. Their carriage was fairly quiet and both women had tried to sleep without success.

‘What do you reckon?’ Izzy asked sleepily.

Jessica was in the seat opposite and couldn’t stop herself yawning. ‘I think we’ve done too much moving around this week.’

‘Not got us anywhere though, has it?’

‘No, most of the players were just a bit embarrassed. I always knew young men had dirty minds but I could have done without hearing about those strippers.’

‘Yeah, some of the practical jokes were a bit extreme but none of it was too serious, was it? Nothing worse than what you’d see in some town centres on a Friday night.’

‘Exactly. One or two might have been holding back but, between this lot, Jacob and the two Dave spoke to, I think we probably heard more or less everything. It’s not as if there were any clear motives for someone external to be coming after them and I don’t reckon any of the ones we spoke to were involved.’

‘Did you speak to Dave?’

‘Yeah. He was pretty pissed off at spending three days talking to members of the public but he’d also been out to talk to the friends Jacob had been with the evening he was last seen.’

‘Did they say much?’

‘Just that they’d been to the pub after work and that was the last they’d seen of him. The samples from his mother matched the hand too so we know for sure it’s his. It would just be nice to get some closure for all these people. We’ve got his parents, Lewis Barnes’s mum and Charlie Marks not knowing if their relatives are alive or dead.’

As she spoke, Jessica heard the text message alert tone on her phone and took the device out of her jacket pocket. They must have been in between good reception areas because she had two missed calls from the station even though it hadn’t rung. There was a text message too. Izzy noticed Jessica’s surprise at the content.

‘What?’ the constable asked.

Jessica gulped with surprise. ‘January Forrester has handed herself in.’

15

Any tiredness Jessica had been feeling evaporated instantly. The rest of the train journey seemed to take twice as long as it actually did while she fumed each time it stopped. Jessica tried not to act too angrily when Izzy pointed out it was in fact running on time. When they finally arrived back in Manchester, a taxi took them to Longsight and Jessica almost forgot how hot it was as she hurried through the entrance. The humidity hit her as the desk sergeant said, ‘Suspect’s downstairs,’ and she walked past him.

Before going to see the woman, Jessica took Izzy to find Rowlands. They eventually discovered him in the canteen with a full plate of chips in front of him. The two women sat in a pair of seats across the table from him. ‘How’s the diet?’ Jessica said.

‘What diet?’

‘Exactly. You should be looking after yourself a bit better now you’re the wrong side of thirty.’

‘I need something to keep me going after all the shite you left me with. I can say this with total honesty – the general public are complete morons. We’ve had every type of maniac calling in over the past couple of days while you’ve been on holiday. Someone reckoned this black cape woman was living in their shed. There’ve been loads more calling in to say their wife, daughter or neighbour owns a cloak a bit like the one in the pictures. It’s like the Salem witch trials or something.’

‘Firstly, we’ve not been on holiday, we’ve spent most of our time sat on trains and in taxis. Secondly, isn’t The Crucible a bit high-brow for you?’

Rowlands screwed a couple of chips into his mouth. ‘I don’t know why you’re so surprised.’

‘Maybe because you have potato stuck to your chin,’ Jessica said. ‘It doesn’t give off a message that says “literary expert”. Anyway, what’s going on with January?’

The constable wiped his chin and swallowed his mouthful. ‘It was a bit of a weird one. Everyone was working as normal and then a call came through from reception looking for you. There was hardly anyone around so I went through to the front and January was standing there with her arms crossed. The guy on the desk didn’t even know who she was because she’d walked in asking for you.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Nothing, she just asked if you were around. I cautioned her then one of the guys took her to the cells. The DCI was upstairs but he said to wait for you, even if it took until tomorrow. She’s downstairs with the duty solicitor. Do you want her bringing up?’

‘No, sod it, she can wait a while.’ Jessica looked at the woman sat next to her. ‘Do you want something to eat?’

‘Anything but chips,’ Izzy replied. ‘For some reason I’ve gone right off them.’

The three detectives sat and ate, catching up on news from the past couple of days. Dave said DCI Cole had sent around an email the previous day reminding everyone about the community engagement programme that would be going on through the summer. Unsurprisingly not too many people had put their names down. Jessica didn’t know when the careers day was but figured it couldn’t be too far off with the schools breaking up soon for the summer. She hoped the chief inspector would realise how busy she was and forget all about it.

Jessica had to admit she was actually quite enjoying working with a small team of people. There was a good chemistry between her and the two constables and she figured they were performing as well as they could do. Any complaining was very much tongue-in-cheek and there was a lot of mutual respect, even if it might not be apparent to other people, given their bickering.

Dave ribbed Jessica about the bridesmaid dress she might have to wear, although she gave nothing away, while Izzy thought up more possibilities for what his tattoo might really say. Most of them seemed to involve words relating to various parts of the male anatomy.

After days of seemingly working non-stop, Jessica felt a lot clearer following fifteen minutes away from the job and, in essence, enjoying a laugh with her mates.

‘I guess it’s time to go see what January has to say for herself,’ she said. ‘Who’s coming in with me?’

‘You go, Iz,’ Dave said. ‘I’ve got some bits to finish anyway.’

‘Great, I thought I was going to have to make you two paper, scissors, stone for it.’

Jessica and Izzy walked through to the interview room and asked one of the officers nearby to bring January up if she’d finished speaking to the solicitor. They had to wait a short while until there was a knock at the door and their suspect was led in along with her legal representative.

January looked remarkably different from the last time Jessica had seen her. She had no make-up on, while brown roots were beginning to appear, clashing with the rest of her long black hair. She wasn’t wearing black clothes and instead had on a pair of jeans with trainers and a hooded top. Someone had set up a desk fan, which was rotating as it blew air around the room.

The woman didn’t look up from the table during the caution and introductions. ‘Are you all right, January?’ Jessica asked.

‘Fine.’ There was a definite tone of resignation in her voice.

‘Where have you been since we last saw you?’

‘Around. With friends. I don’t want to say.’ Jessica thought that was probably fair enough. If people had really been hiding her, they hadn’t broken the law because it wasn’t as if she had absconded from custody and there was no real need to push it considering that wasn’t a priority.

‘Why did you hand yourself in?’

‘I was tired of staying indoors. I’ve not done anything wrong but I realised the longer I stayed away the worse it looked. I know I shouldn’t have disappeared.’

‘Why did you?’

‘All the stuff in the papers at first and after you spoke to me. I was scared because I know how it all looked.’

‘How do you think it looked?’

January sighed. ‘Well, Lewis had gone missing and the only stuff you had was about that person in the black cape thing. Obviously I’ve got one, so you were going to come after me. Vicky was calling me and I couldn’t cope.’

‘You should know, we found a sample of Lewis’s blood on your kitchen floor.’

January looked up from the table to her solicitor and then finally met Jessica’s eyes for the first time. She seemed on the brink of tears. ‘I’m surprised it was only the kitchen. If you look closely enough there’s probably some of mine around the place too. We didn’t have the most normal of relationships.’ She turned her arms over and rolled the sleeves on her hoody up, revealing the scars Jessica had seen a glimpse of before. ‘The only reason I got charged for scratching him was because Vicky made him complain. He hit me too but I never said anything. It was just what we did. He’d tell you if he was here.’

Jessica nodded gently. She had no way of knowing it was true but, as she looked at the young woman’s face, she believed her. She also realised there was a problem brewing because January hadn’t been charged with anything and, given she had a pretty good explanation for why there was blood in her flat, she hadn’t actually committed an offence. When she had been first arrested, she had been given police bail, which only meant she had to reappear at the station at a later date. Not answering that bail wasn’t necessarily uncommon and, if the investigation was still ongoing, a suspect would usually just be sent a letter saying their bail had been extended. January hadn’t turned up when she was supposed to but it wasn’t enough to hold her for very long and, unless they were going to charge her with something relating to the disappearance of her boyfriend, they wouldn’t be able to keep her for longer than maybe a night. The duty solicitor would have told her that.

Because she had surrendered they would simply have the usual length of time to hold her as they couldn’t keep bringing her in for interview without the formal charge. Regardless of any of that, Jessica knew they had nothing on the woman because there was no law about staying with friends for a couple of weeks. Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t connect her to the other victims and, aside from the blood on their kitchen floor, nothing to link her to anything untoward happening to her boyfriend either.

‘I’m going to ask you about some names and show you some pictures,’ Jessica said. ‘Can you tell me if you know the people?’ Jessica had up-to-date photos of Edward Marks and Jacob Chrisp but January said she didn’t recognise either of them. Jessica again thought the woman was being honest.

Jessica re-checked the details of her boyfriend’s disappearance but ultimately January had nothing to add. She either genuinely knew nothing or was very good at hiding it. She certainly wasn’t evasive and when her solicitor went to step in on a couple of occasions, the woman bypassed him, answering anyway.

Jessica had reached the end of anything she could reasonably hope to get from the interview and January had replied to everything without complaint. ‘Is there anything you want to add?’ Jessica asked.

January shrugged. ‘Just that I miss him.’

Jessica said nothing and the woman was escorted back to the cells.

‘Are we going to charge her?’ Izzy asked when it was just them left in the room.

‘With what? Being in a mutually abusive relationship? Knowing someone who went missing? We can’t prove she’s done anything wrong.’

‘So are you going to let her go?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll talk to Jack but it’s not as if we have anything to take to the CPS. Conspiracy to wear dark clothing isn’t going to cut it.’

‘Only with the fashion police. What do you think about her?’

‘Wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time who just happens to have a similar taste in clothing to whoever we are looking for. We already had her in without charge before she skipped out and we can’t keep arresting her. She seemed happy to cooperate this time and we didn’t find anything except that dried blood at her house. Considering the two of them lived together, it’s not necessarily a surprise. If you’re chopping carrots in your kitchen, accidentally nick yourself and drip blood on the floor, it doesn’t prove much, does it?’

‘So we’re screwed basically?’ Diamond said.

‘Exactly. I’ll go upstairs and see what Jack reckons, then have a chat with the custody sergeant. You may as well nick off. The last few days have just blended into one. I don’t even know what time it is.’

Jessica walked back through the station, taking her suit jacket off. After going from the interview room where there was a fan back into the main areas, the heat felt stifling again. She walked up the stairs hoping Cole hadn’t gone home for the day. She could see through the window of his office that he was still sitting in his chair. As he waved her in, she saw in his face how things were weighing on him. The worry lines across his forehead seemed to have deepened and he looked older than he had a few weeks earlier. She thought all the years of staying calm whatever the circumstances were finally catching up with him. Sometimes everyone needed a sweary five minutes to get it out of their system.

He obviously knew January had handed herself in but they were both in agreement they had nothing they could take to the CPS to ultimately charge her with. Cole suggested keeping her in overnight on the off-chance anything else came in from the phone calls. The custody sergeant would likely agree, simply because she had disappeared, but they both knew it was unlikely something would turn up and they would end up releasing her in the morning anyway.

‘Are you okay, Sir?’ Jessica asked. The chief inspector looked very tired.

Almost as if on cue, he yawned. ‘Yes, thanks for asking. Just lots of pressure from above because of Christine Johnson. We’re really struggling, if I’m honest.’

‘Anything I can help with?’ Jessica didn’t really mean it seeing as she was busy enough but it sounded like the right thing to say.

‘Um . . . maybe.’ Jessica’s heart sank, realising she could have talked herself into more work. ‘How about tomorrow, you spend the day with Jason. I know you get on well. Just go over everything. I’ll get Louise to have a look over your things. Maybe it all just needs a fresh pair of eyes?’

Jessica wasn’t overly pleased with the idea but thought it couldn’t do much harm if it was only for a day. Maybe he was right and a new viewpoint on each case could get things moving.

‘All right, I’ll come in tomorrow and bail January, then trail Jason for the day. If anything happens, though, I want someone to call me straight away.’

‘Of course. I’m not suggesting anything permanent. It’s Friday tomorrow then we’ve got the summer fete thing the day after.’

‘That’s this weekend?’

Cole yawned again. ‘Yes, I put it all in an email. Didn’t you see it? The super’s big on the community engagement thing. I said you’d all get the time back.’

Jessica tried not to sound too annoyed ‘Isn’t that the kind of thing we have officers in uniform for? No one’s going to want to talk to me.’

‘I don’t know, you have all this crime scene stuff on television nowadays. I think you’ll be surprised. Thanks for signing up for the careers day thing too.’

Jessica couldn’t be bothered telling him it wasn’t her who had done so. ‘No worries. Will you pass all the messages on to Jason and Louise about plans for tomorrow?’

‘Yeah, believe me I think they’ll be grateful to have a change for a day.’

Jessica said goodbye and left. After the grind the week had turned into, she really didn’t mind having one day to think about something else. She wondered how Louise might react to Dave and Izzy’s bickering and sent them both text messages to let them know what was going on.

The next day she arrived at the station with a plan to check the phone calls from the night before and then put January out of her misery. A night in the cells would have hopefully taught her a lesson that she should cooperate with them in future. As she arrived, there was a small van parked outside reception belonging to the Scene of Crime team. They were a common sight at crime scenes but not usually at the station. Jessica walked into reception and asked the desk sergeant what was going on.

‘DCI’s down at the HR office.’

Jessica didn’t need a fuller answer than that to have a pretty good idea what had happened. She rushed through the corridors until she saw a small crowd of officers at the entrance to the station’s main admin room. Cole was there and saw her coming.

‘Ah, I didn’t want to call you in especially,’ he said.

‘We got another package, didn’t we?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does it look like the other ones?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it addressed to me?’

The chief inspector didn’t say anything, nodding instead. Jessica felt a chill ripple down her back – someone had sent her a finger that most likely belonged to Jacob Chrisp.

‘Have they opened it yet?’

‘No. Someone from the department flagged it up and they’re going to take it back to Bradford Park.’